


Light Your Heart Up

by adelz



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Abuse, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, F/F, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adelz/pseuds/adelz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts out as simple curiosity. Gaige had not been one of the Vault hunters Angel had lured to Pandora. So, of course she needs to get closer to her and do some data gathering.</p>
<p>A collection of Gaige/Angel drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Questions

Gaige is below deck when Angel finds her through the ECHOnet. The young girl is in deep concentration. Angel can see the tip of a pink tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth-unnoticed grease stain on her nose. Her robot-DeathTrap, Angel remembers- has been powered down and is in the corner next to her. The chest piece removed, revealing the wires and cogs inside. 

Gaige is holding the piece of missing metal in her hands. It is blue and brittle now, damaged forever by Captain Flynt. Angel can see Flynt's pistol strapped to Gaige's thigh. At least Gaige managed to get some small revenge for her robot.

“Would you like some help,” Angel asks. She can’t help but giggle when Gaige jumps and drops the piece of metal. 

“Oh my god Angel! You can’t do that!” She picks the part she drops up and swears. “Dammit, now it’s even more dented.” Gaige sighs. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Gaige brightens. 

“Well, since I don’t have the tools or parts to fix DeathTrap, can I ask you some questions?” Gaige’s eyes grow round and her bottom lip begins to quiver. Angel feels a headache coming on. Gaige didn’t stop questioning Angel the entire trip to Liar’s Burg. It was a two hour walk. Gaige had also been fighting Bullymongs at the time. 

“No.” 

“Oh come on! Pretty please with lots of binary sprinkles on top. I’ll be your best friend forever!” Gaige smiles. Angel can feel her resolve crumbling. 

“Fine, but no weird questions sex question." 

“Oh man, but that’s half the fun. One weird sex question.” 

“No!” 

“Pleasepleasepleaseplease.” Gaige clasps her hands together and the lip quivering returns. 

“Fine! But just one.” 

Gaige whoops and then begins tapping one finger against her cheek. Angel has learned to dread seeing that action. Zero shares her sentiments, or at least, Angel thinks they do. She still isn’t able to understand Zero all that well. 

“Nah,” Gaige says after a while, finger stilling. “I think I’m going to save it for later. Payback for scaring me.” Gaige grins and for once, Angel wishes that she could swear.


	2. Bandit Camp

Fishguts Outpost, one of many Bloodshot encampments in the Three Horns area, and the current location of a valuable Hyperion adapter. How a group of bandits managed to get their hands on Hyperion tech was a marvel. Jack had always made certain that the Loader bots sent down to Pandora contained little in the way of useful technology. 

He had always insisted that he didn’t believe that they would know what to do with it anyway, besides shoving it up their own ass. 

The compound was tiny compared to the other Bloodshot outposts in Three Horns. Its only distinguishing feature was the entrance into the camp. The skull of a gigantic Pandoran sea creature, gaping mouth open and wide-served as the only way in. Large walls surrounded the camp, the cliff drop beside it prevented most attempts at a climb.

“So, what’s the plan boss?”

Maya glances at Axton and then stares back at the camp, chewing her lip. Krieg stands next to her, wringing his hands together and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Zero is perched on top of the Ammo vendor, Sniper rifle out and aimed towards the maw of the skull. Salvador leans against the same vendor, polishing his Torgue shotgun with a dirty, bloodstained rag. 

Gaige types a few more commands into the Catch-A-Ride station, growling in frustration when she receives an error code. They received the message the first time she tried to activate the machine, but Gaige has yet to give up, even after Angel explained the problem.

“How am I not getting us in? I should be able to do this. Come on girl. A little of this, a little of that.” Error flashed across the screen and Gaige went from pleading for the console to work, to banging on it. “That’s it! I’ve had it with this piece of junk. I need to shoot something!”

Maya smiles at her. “You’re in luck then. I’ve just came up our attack strategy. Krieg goes in first, doing that whole setting himself of fire thing. Then-hey, where are you going?”

Gaige stomps past Maya and starts heading towards the mouth of the camp. Angel flitted into her ECHO device. 

“What are you doing? Maya has a plan.” Gaige pulls Flynt’s Tinderbox from the holster on her thigh. “Gaige, what ever you do, don’t shoot.” 

Gaige opens shoots.

Flaming bullets fly into the camp. Some manage to hit their mark the first time, bandit after bandit bursting into flame and screaming as they die in agony. Most of the shots fired miss, bouncing off the walls of the shelters that bandits had built, causing them to burst into flame, and trapping any bandit hiding in them in a sea of fire.

The more shots Gaige fires into the camp, the more she misses, and the more damage done to the actual camp itself than to the bandits that were now starting to open fire on her. 

Angel hears the familiar cracking noise of a shield breaking. “Gaige! You need to get out of here.”

Gaige ignores her, and fires a few more shots. The pistols clicks. 

“Damn, I’m out of ammo.” 

Gaige reaches for the shotgun strapped to her back, when Angel sees the Psycho running towards them, lit grenade in one hand. She opens her mouth to scream, and then the Psycho flies into the air. The purple ball of energy containing him and the blast. Maya flicks her fingers and blood splashes against the ECHO, forcing Angel to see everything through a red filter.

The others fall in behind Maya, with Zero hidden in the shadows. They make quick work of the remaining bandits. 

Angel travels back to Maya to assess the damage. The camp is now in flames, the snow that had once blanketed that ground has melted, leaving the ground beneath them muddy and slick. 

Maya wrinkles her nose in distaste and Angel knows the air smells like burnt flesh; foul and unforgettable.

Maya stalks towards Gaige. The girl was kneeling in the mud next to one of the fallen bandits. She was digging through his pockets. The screen of her ECHO was still covered in blood, and now that Angel was no longer inside of it, she could see the red stains on Gaige’s clothes and face.

She saw Maya coming and held out her hand. The Hyperion adapter nestled in her palm. “I found it,” Gaige said. Her green eyes large and full of excitement.

Maya grabs the adapter from Gaige’s hand and then grabs the girl by the shirt, pulling her to her feet.

“What were you thinking coming in by yourself? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

Gaige shruggs. “I don’t get why you are so mad. I would have just come back via the New-U stations anyway. It’s not like it would be a big deal or anything, we can always get more money.”

Maya lets go of Gaige and backs away. Axton and Salvador looked as confused as Angel feels. Zero’s mask hid all emotions, but they were staring at Gaige-watching her with interest. Krieg was arranging the bodies into some form of strange shape. He would occasionally say something about the blue tattoo needing more purple to shine. 

“What are you taking about?”

Gaige rolls her eyes and begins talking slowly, as if she was explaining something simple to a young child. 

“The Hyperion New-U stations. Upon death, and for a small fee, they digistruct, well, a new you. So you seem I don’t get what the big deal is. Death is just a slap on the wrists here. There was nothing to worry about. Thanks to my anarchy skill, I had the whole thing under control. Would have been easier if DeathTrap hadn’t gotten busted, but c’est la vie and all that jazz.”

Maya rushes towards Gaige and begins to look the girl over.

“Axton, help me search her. We have to stop the bleeding.”

Gaige moves away from her. “I’ve not been shot.”

“That is the only explanation for anything that you just said.”

“And I’m saying that I am fine.”

Axton rests one large hand on Maya’s shoulder. “Hey, Sal, mind taking Gaige over to the Catch-A-Ride station and getting that all fixed up?” He takes the adapter from Maya and tosses it to Salvador, who catches it and nods. 

“No hay problema, Commando.” Salvador slings one arm around Gaige and begins to guide her towards the exit of the camp. “Come on Red, let’s go fix everything up and get us some wicked rides.”

Angel only hears, “She’s young boss and this is Pandora,” before she flits away to help Gaige and Salvador. She tries to focus on the task at hand. The Vault hunters need to make it into Sanctuary and to do that they need vehicles, and to get those she needs to hack into the Catch-A-Ride stations. She doesn’t have time to worry about the youngest of the Vault hunters. The one who ended up on that train by accident and not design.

Angel shakes her head. She needs to focus. 

Gaige is typing away at the console when Angel arrives at her ECHO. The adapter plugged into the side. “Ugh, why isn’t this working? You said this would work Angel.”

“It will, trust me.” Angel closes her eyes. The code of the Catch-A-Ride station dances before her eyes, always moving away before she can reach out and touch them, bend them to her will. She feels the adapter on the edges of the code, waiting. She pulls it it and waits. The tech made for her powers begins to seep into the unfamiliar code, deep down inside. All she needs to do is give it time, and the machine will be hers to control. She reaches out and pulls at the code. “PhaseShift.”

It dances for her now, she pulls and twists the code until it gives her what it wants. The console lights up, the screen for designing a vehicle pulls up. Angel grins when she catches Gaige staring at her in awe. 

“Told you it would work.”


	3. There Is Always A Traitor

Angel’s throne is made of heavy steel, painted yellow and black. There she slumbers, strapped upon the cold metal, wires and needles jabbed into her body, ensuring that Eridium is constantly pumped into her body. The wires drilled into her skull connects her consciousness to the computers that rest behind the throne. They are the only freedom that she knows. Access to the ECHOnet allowing her to be everywhere and see everything, if she so chose.

The vault key floats above her, giving off a purple glow, barely visible in the bright, white, light that Jack has on at all times. He tells her he does it because she is his special princess, and she deserves to glow. All it does it hurt her eyes, and so, when he places the heavy black mask over her head, dulling the harsh light, she thanks him.

Angel knows, she would thank him for the helmet, even if it didn’t block out the harsh light. It allows her to focus her powers, to keep her from being completely overwhelmed by the flood of information constantly uploaded into her brain. 

Jack built it for her, because he cares about the pain in her head when she can’t bring herself to leave the ECHOnet. It’s hard for her sometimes, she just wants to watch the wind sweep through the sand of the Dust, and wonder about how it would feel to have the wind blowing through her hair, or the feel of sand between her toes. 

She likes to watch the bandits in Sanctuary walk through the town, boots splashing through puddles of melted snow. Her legs are immobile, useless to her Jack tells her. 

Why do you want to walk, when you can fly?

The helmet off for now. Angel blinks back tears as her eyes struggle to adjust to the light. The tubes of purple, liquid, Eridium glow above her, and pulsate. Her veins ache from the Eridium being pumped into them. It makes her feel so heavy, like she should just close her eyes and float away. 

Angel longs to return to the ECHOnet, but she knows that Jack won’t let her go until she delivers her report. She begins, not even waiting for her eyes to adjust. Jack looms over her, her tears making the features of his mask blur.

“The Vault hunters have arrived in Sanctuary. Roland was taken by an entity known as the Firehawk before the Vault hunters managed to reach the city. News of their arrival, and the fact they survived an attack from you, has given the bandits a surge of hope.” Angel licks her lips, they taste of salt. “Everything is going as planned sir.”

Jack laughs and pats her head. Angel smiles up at him, happy that she is doing something right. She hopes she has done well enough to get the lights dimmed, even if it is just for a moment.

“Those bandits in Sanctuary are such idiots. As if I could just fail at killing a bunch of nobodies.” Jack runs his fingers through her hair, twisting and pulling slightly. His shoulders tense and Angel knows what he is about to ask. He pulls her hair over her cheek, hiding the wispy, silver markings on her cheek.

“Is the Siren everything we thought she would be,” he asks, voice low and Angel can hear the slight edge of mania creeping in. His grip on her hair tightens. 

Angel stares up into his mismatched eyes and tells him everything about Maya, of how she is the leader of their band of chosen Vault hunters, the way her powers work and of how they can be overcome if Maya is overwhelmed. 

Jack smiles and pressed his lips against her forehead.

“You’ve done well Angel. You’re the only one I can count on. The only one in this forsaken world. Do you know that?” 

Angel nods. She knows Jack needs her to be his eyes and ears, he tells her all the time. He needs her to keep him safe.

“Tell me about the others.” She does. 

Axton is Maya’s second. He is exactly what his ECHO logs made him out to be. Resourceful, but also in love with violence. Axton has been enjoying killing any bandit brave enough to come after his, or any of his new friends, bounties.

Salvador loves violence even more than Axton. He is the muscle of the group, and always up for a good joke, even if it is during a gun fight.

Angel still doesn’t have much to say about Zero. He speaks only in haiku, and his is deadly with a sniper rifle and a blade. The other one, besides Maya, to watch out for.

She doesn’t have much to say about Krieg either. Maya found him and he tagged along like a lost Skag pup. He is only a potential danger. Attack Maya when he is around, and the two will make quick work of anything you can throw at them.

Angel’s voice falters when it comes to Gaige. The girl is the youngest of the Vault hunters, with signs of severe trauma, easily exploitable. Angel knows the girl isn’t from Pandora, doesn’t fit on Pandora, and she has a talent for engineering. Jack would find Gaige interesting.

Angel thinks of Gaige’s bright smile as she chatters, without stopping for breath, and with no end in sight. Gaige fussing over DeathTrap and her deep in the bowels of a ship, full of sorrow at the fact she can’t repair him. Gaige covered in blood-fingers singed from firing round after round from a incendiary pistol- staring at her with total admiration as she hacks into a Catch-A-Ride station.

Angel lies. “There is nothing special about the girl. Don’t worry about her.”

Jack grins, wicked and full of teeth. He says nothing to her as he leaves, but he does not dim the lights.

Angel watches him go through the ECHOnet, the heavy helmet back on, obscuring the vision of her human body, but allowing her to focus on seeing through other means.

The ECHOnet calls to her, a sweet song promising freedom, of the chance to be more than what the flesh allows, to dull the burn of Eridium in her veins, the pain of wires in her brain.

Code flows around her, blue and perfect. She reaches out to it and holds on as it sweeps her away from her throne.

Angel loses herself in the ECHOnet. She watches a bandit training a pack of Skags-tossing them bits of what she assumes to be human meat-every time they perform a trick.

The Hodunks race through the Dust, warring with other clans over bits of salvage hidden beneath the shifting sands. Stalkers roam the cliffs of the lush Highlands, looming above the sands of the Dust like an unobtainable jewel.

Angel travels to Sanctuary. She floats from ECHO to ECHO, watching the bandits that call the city home go about their daily routine. 

Vendors hawk their wares in the center of the city, selling fresh Skag tongues, charms promising protection from Handsome Jack, ECHO recordings from various corporations, and a wide selection of parts and scrap.

Angel catches a flash of red, and flits to an ECHO closer to the scrap vendor. Gaige is standing there, hands braced on steel table. She is speaking to the vendor, voice low. She leans closer to the vendor, his face growing redder the closer she gets. 

He slams his hands down on his table, bits of metal flying. He grabs a metal sheet from a nearby stack and thrusts it into Gaige’s arms. 

Gaige grins at and him, says something Angel still can’t hear, and walks away with a smug look on her face and a spring in her step. 

Angel flits into her ECHO.

“What was that about,” she asks. She grins when Gaige jumps a bit and fumbles with her part.

“You really need to stop doing that. Hey, quit laughing at me. You didn’t scare me. I was just surprised and all.” Gaige pouts when Angel doesn’t stop laughing. “Fine, whatever, you meanie.”

She adjusts the sheet of metal in her arms and answers the question. “So, I was looking for parts and I noticed there was a quest over at the scrap vendor. The guy has the parts to build a smelter, but doesn’t have the smarts in order to actually build one. Enter me. I agree for my pick of any part, cause I notice he has some rather nice sheets of metal and one is perfect for DT.”

Angel ignores the bits about questing, doing actual research on Gaige will have to wait.

“So,” Gaige continues, “since Maya is being all hero character on me, and I’m stuck here until DT is fixed while everyone is out hunting Bullymongs for Sir Hammerlock, I decide to build this guy the greatest smelter EVER! This baby will even melt down Eridium in order to make slag weapons.” 

“Now, listen to this shit,” Gaige says as she rolls her eyes. “So I build it and I show to collect my reward and this fucking asshole is like, Marcus is out for my ass now and it is all your fault so no reward little girl, and I’m like fuck you random quest giver. It isn’t my fault I’m so super brilliant that now everyone is jealous and wanting to kill you. That wasn’t it our contract and if you don’t give me my metal, I will shoot you. So of course, this loser handed it over. Now I get to fix DT.”

“Marcus will kill that man. He isn’t fond of competition or refunds.”

Gaige shrugs. “Not my problem the guy is a random, nameless, NPC and Marcus is a named character.”

Angel doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she says nothing. She needs time to think of a gentle way to ask Gaige about her views on the world.

They head back to the Roland’s head quarters, which in the wake of Roland’s disappearance, the Vault hunters have inhabited. 

The HQ is nothing special: two stories, a safe, beds and lockers. It is a simple base, built for practicality and function over comfort, with the large war room taking up the most space on the second floor. Beds are lined along both walls in the second room upstairs, and this is where Gaige heads to, waving to Tannis on her way up.

DT has been shoved in one corner of the tiny room, and Angel understands why Maya wants Gaige to finish her repairs. He takes up the majority of the tiny, cluttered room. Long claws sprawled across the bed closest to him, wires from his chest sparking. Angel doubts anyone is getting sleep with that thing nearby. 

Gaige digistructs her tools and gets to work. She shapes the metal with precision, holding it up to DeathTrap, shaping it again, until she gets an exact fit.

Angel watches her work in awe. Gaige is stronger that what her petite frame would suggest, more than capable of wielding a gun larger than a pistol. The sparks from the metal glow bright red in the air around her, casting a light on her green eyes, which glint in the shadows of the dusty room.

The metal arm moves the sheet back and forth to suit Gaige’s needs with a speed Angel had not thought the thing could possess, considering her arm looked like it was made from spare parts from a garage.

Gaige fitted the sheet over DeathTrap’s chest, adjusted a few wires, and then the floating death machine was coming to life. It floated above the room, examining its surroundings.

Gaige whooped and jumped to hug her robot. “Oh DT! I knew that after completing a series of mundane quests I would receive the rewards in order to repair you!” 

There it was again. She kept talking about quests and rewards.

“Gaige, what exactly do you think is going on?”

Gaige rolled her eyes and put a hand on her hip. “We are on a quest to stop Handsome Jack, the most obvious of Big Bads. Maya is the hero of the story and we are her team. Axton is the lancer, Sal is the big guy, I’m the smart guy, you are the chick, Krieg is the sixth ranger, and Zero is-” Gaige pauses and sits down on a nearby bed.

She gasps and then stands back up, pacing back and forth. DeathTrap watches her and twitches, preparing himself for a fight.

“Zero must be the traitor, of course, there is always a traitor. Don’t you get it? He is working for Handsome Jack and his goal is to take us down from the inside, and since Maya is the hero-oh my god! He is trying to kill Maya, because of course, the hero in these kinds of stories die to turn what is silly and fun into something serious and end completely surprise you.”

Gaige lifts the ECHO up until she is staring into Angel’s eyes. “You have to help me save her. We have to stop Zero.”

Angel’s blood runs cold as she listens to Gaige rant and rave. She can’t let Gaige plant the idea that there could be a traitor in anyone’s head. If this fails, Jack will be disappointed in her. She can’t go back to the bright lights, screams from the ECHOnet in her brain. 

She doesn’t want to see the scarred woman with the blue eyes and the smiling man with the mismatched eyes, holding the hand of the little girl. The little girl with the tattoos hiding beneath the makeup, lurking and waiting for their time to shine.

“There can’t be a traitor,” she blurts out. She struggles for what to say next as Gaige stares at her, waiting for an explanation. Angel decides to use Gaige’s beliefs against her. 

Jack will be so proud of you.

“This is just a typical, uh, action story. There isn’t anything beneath the surface, except more guns. There can’t be a traitor.”

Gaige taps a finger against her cheek. “Maybe,” she says after a while. “We can’t know for certain until we investigate.”

“Investigate?”

“We are going to follow Zero around until we find proof that he is the traitor or proof that he isn’t!”

“You are going to follow around a trained assassin that excels in stealth and frequently disappears without a trace.”

“Yep! This plan is brilliant!” Gaige begins to cackle, which turns into a snort. Angel smiles, despite her worry. They will find no proof and Gaige will go on being Gaige. Jack’s plan will still work. Stalking Zero with Gaige actually sounds fun.

“Okay, I’m in. What are we going to do first?”

Gaige grins at her, bright and full of shared mischief. Angel feels something clench in her chest and she feels a loss she can’t explain as the smile fades, while Gaige explains the plan.

They are sitting in Moxxi’s, Gaige and ECHO covered in trash from their third failed attempt at following Zero. Gaige is telling Salvador of their problems with being able to keep with them. Salvador is laughing, hands beating against the table as he howls. He knocks his beer over and it pours off the table, pooling onto the floor below, and running down the bar. 

Moxxi sighs from behind the bar.

“This isn’t funny. What if Zero kills Maya?”

Salvador stops laughing and yanks on Gaige’s pigtails. 

“He isn’t going to hurt Maya. Zero ain’t a traitor. Weird, but the guy doesn’t have Hyperion rat stamped on his ass. Worry not mi amiga, we are all amigos here.”

Gaige sniffs. “But the story-”

Salvador sighs. “I know Maya worries about you. Says you went all funny in the head from the shock of ending up here, me, I think you just don’t want to think about something. Hiding behind all this story nonsense. Life isn’t clean, it is dirty and full of blood and guts and well you get the point. You can’t turn life into a story, it don’t fit in a neat little box. People surprise you, and others are real simple. Zero is real simple. He wants a good challenge. To kill that baddest motherfucker and that is why he isn’t a traitor. His motives are too simple, yeah.”

Gaige smiles, eyes watery, and Salvador pats her on the back.

“Do you think he will get mad if I still follow him? I was having a lot of fun.”

“Nah, and if he does, you tell me and I will knock that fucker flat.”

Gaige hugs Salvador and thanks him. She picks the ECHO off the table and beams at Angel. 

“Up for attempt number four?” 

Angel smiles and nods. “Yeah, I would like that.”

As the ECHO clatters-alongside Gaige-down the steps in Scooter’s garage; Angel realizes, as she listens to Gaige laugh, that she is having fun. She thought fun was watching others, seeing how the world worked, but she was wrong. This is fun. Listening to others laugh-she even catches the slight sound of a distorted chuckle- and laughing with them.

Gaige bends down to pick up the ECHO, her eyes bright from laughter. Angel feels that pang inside her chest as Gaige looks down at her and smiles. 

Angel smiles back.


End file.
